


Watching

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-06
Updated: 2004-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:59:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is the language of day, and the language of night, and the standing stones watch and whisper of sex and blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lilith

 

 

She came out here to be alone. Prince's daughter, king's wife, she is never alone. There are always her women with her, for companionship and modesty, and the guard of bright young men in worn leather with restless eyes, for she is too valuable to lose. Her husband's eyes are on her at table where she sits beside him and drinks her wine watered as a lady should. The eyes of those who envy him her possession are on her too, for she is tall and pale and lovely, and she has heard a squire gasp aloud when she entered a room. She has been trained for this from childhood, and the day before she left her father's house the priest murmured his blessing for children and peace over her head.

It is a great honor to be the one married to the High King. And the place needed the hand of a woman over it; the ale was better, the bread better, the place more peaceful. And in the work the queen can forget that she misses her home.

She has set her women to cataloguing the storeroom and gone outside. There is a rock beside this stream, where it changes its level, and murmurs secretly to itself, and the trees around let the sunshine in. It is her place of peace.

The sun is suddenly less bright, as it passes behind a cloud. It rouses her from her meditation, and she feels eyes on her.

"Who is there?" she calls out. It is only after a moment that she realizes she spoke in the language of her childhood.

But the watcher understood. She came out of the darkness of the forest, wearing scarlet like blood, her hair braided into a snakelike rope down her back, and smiling like a cat. And the queen recognizes her.

"I know you," she says. "You are my husband's sister. Your son is Mordred."

The woman's face goes still and faintly contemptuous. "As you are the daughter of a prince and the wife of a king. But no child grows in your womb."

The queen drops her glance. She knew herself, knew the slight heaviness in her breasts and tension in her belly that meant she'd bleed soon, that she'd failed again. But those were invisible. Was this woman a witch, to know the state of another woman's womb before quickening? She drops the hand that raises to cross herself, for this woman whose name she has never quite heard to remember it has pricked her one sore point. A year past, and there is no heir, not yet. Blessed Lord, may it be soon...

"And you?" she challenges the dark haired woman.

The woman smiles. "I am Morgan."

"That's a man's name," she said. But it made her think of home, and the soft words flowing about her. The men spoke Latin, and Greek, too, those who'd traveled past the sea's edge. The women spoke the soft liquid sharp-edged Cymric, a language of secrets and sidelong glances and whispers in the night between lovers or enemies. And this Morgan has said her name with the soft intonation of home.

For all he is this woman's brother, Arthur has never spoken anything but Latin to her, not even in passion in the night.Her women are all of this land, and among themselves speak its tongue, a flock of strange chattering birds. One night she whispered,  
"...cariad...beloved..." as he kissed her, and he went stiff and dark, left her and returned late, and soaked in wine. She has never spoken in the language of night to him again.

"It is my name," the dark woman said. "And you, white mare?"

The queen flinches at the word play....her name, translated, the symbol of the pagans. She had long suspected her father hedged his bets and honored both, with the wisdom of a border lord.

"Don't say that," she whispered. "I'm a true daughter of the Church."

"Are you, now," the woman said, and smiled, white teeth flashing in olive skin. "A true daughter of the Church surely would find her solitude and peace on her knees of the chapel, rather than with her hands in the water of a sacred spring."

She looked around in panic. But there were none of the old stones here, standing or pulled down as some had been when they overthrew the pagans. They chilled her and challenged her, and in the silence of the meadows seemed to whisper dark secrets.

"This is no sacred spring," she challenged. Morgan just smiled.

"All springs are sacred," she said. "Run back indoors, little queen, before my so-jealous brother thinks you meet a man beyond the walls."

***

That night at dinner Morgan sits just where she can see nothing of her but her sleeve, the occasional glimpse of the veil she wears with propriety, revealing no hair to tempt angels or men. She wears saffron, golden as sunlight, with blood-red embroidery at the wrists that twines like mating snakes.

"What did you do today?" Arthur asks, offering his wife a slice of meat from his plate.

"I went walking," she answers. She always tells Arthur the truth. It makes it easier to lie.

"Who with?"

"No one, really...but your sister was there, and we spoke."

Arthur's face darkens, and he shifts in his chair beside her. He bites savagely into his bread, rather than reply. But she knows her husband well enough to know he keeps secrets behind his eyes.

"She is a dangerous woman," he says, finally. "Do not trust her." He looks at her, and swears softly into his plate when Morgan laughs like a stream rippling,the kind that is dangerous to ford, at something her companion has said.

***

Thinking absently about the problem with the pages, the queen walks past where she intended to go. In the bend of the hall where few come at this hour stand a man and a woman. He is dark, one of the foreign warriors that have pledged their sword here, swarthy of skin and black haired, small and fast in sword practice. And he is kissing a woman in the hall, hands molding her hips and breasts with intent, as she flows into and against him like a river, hands in her dark loose hair. He groans, and says softly, "Ah, lady, please, please..." They burn like flame together, and the watcher feels herself awaken in response, watching.

"You shall be sent home if anyone knows," she whispers hot into his ear. "Arthur brooks no rivals...and your vows are to him."

"I care nothing for that," he says in return, tautly. "Ah, lady, I die for your touch..."

She pulls away, draws him into a room, and the last thing the queen hears is Morgan's triumphant laugh.

Arthur comes early to bed that night, and his lady is glad.

The man is sent away, and in the silence of their bed the next night, she asks her husband why.

"Whoever she chooses as husband becomes king, and her daughter is queen after her," he says a moment later.

"Old ways, " she says.

"They keep to the old ways up there," he says, and as close as they lie, she feels his shiver, and wonders. When he kisses her, she can taste the untold secrets in his mouth, coppery, like old blood.

***

When Morgan takes a husband, it is one of her bodyguard, and Arthur's first reaction is of relief. And then he orders her to remain, even though she protests she must return and oversee her lands.

Her husband goes instead, and Morgan remains. She does not attend church, and her eyes are on the king and queen both in court and out, and the queen finds her eyes on her, wondering. Wondering how her hair would feel in hands used to handling embroidery silks, and her skin, surely softer than the samite of the dress that molds itself over high, full breasts and slender waist and hips....Morgan meets her searching, wondering eyes, and the queen drops them and blames the fire for the heat in her face, and the wine she took for the heat in her belly.

***

She washes herself in the small tub, with the water her maid heated over the fire. Wrapped, then, in a warm soft wool dress, she is combing out her hair when the door opens.

"You can take the tub, Aethel," the queen says, and the mild laugh brings her head up. It is not Aethel, but Morgan there. She is wearing a woad-dyed dress the color of her eyes, Arthur's eyes. Her mouth is red, like a child eating berries, and her dark hair is down her back loose. She is clothed from throat to floor, hands and face the only things showing, but there is about her a dangerous nakedness, like a drawn sword.

"Where is your veil?" she says, startled into speech.

Morgan laughs. "Do you never think of anything but decency?"

"Whores wear their hair loose, Morgan, and Gorlois is..."

"At home as he should be," she says. "And Arthur is talking and drinking, and I do not think he will come to you for a long time. So I came to help you pass the time." There is a double meaning in her words. The queen pretends that she did not hear it, to make it go away.

"He doesn't like you, " she says, and the other woman laughs.

"Set a guard on your tongue, little queen," she says. "I've known that since we were children. But like has little to do with it."

"I don't like you either," she says, and feels the lie of it in her veins, and the truth of it in her mouth.

"No," she says consideringly, "you don't. I disturb you. And you watch me when you think yourself unobserved, yet when we are together, it is as if you are a green squire with his lady.You speak of trifles, and your voice shakes."

"You're wrong," says her mouth, and her body leaps to confirm her rightness, and she hopes Arthur is not too drunk tonight for love. "It's...."

"Wrong?" says Morgan, smiling, pacing closer like a cat. Her eyes are cat-green in the firelight, too. "And what harm does it do? You'll get no bastard off a woman, unlike your Lancelot."

"What does he have to do with it?" she said, genuinely unsure. Lancelot, chief of her bodyguard, quick to serve....His gaze unsettled her, much the way Morgan did, awakening her skin like sunlight.

"If you don't know it, I won't say it, brother's wife."

"Use my name," the queen said tensely.  
Morgan shook her head, and the firelight rippled on her hair.   
"Your name?" she said, and smiled with venom in it. "You are your father's daughter, your husband's wife, and Domina, My Lady, to all others...I don't think there's anything else behind your grey eyes. If there was..." She trailed off, and let it go.

"And if there was, Morgan?" she asked, and watched Morgan's eyes go darker at her name on the other woman's lips, pronounced with the intonations of memory.

"I think if there was it would close the door," she said, watching her ever so intently, "and it might do what it wants to do, what shivers in your hands and eyes, instead of what husband and father and church say it ought." Her voice rang with bitter contempt on the last word, but it was not aimed at the queen. And the queen wondered what she had given up to another person's rule, that she hated it still.

Morgan turned, the moment passed, and walked toward the fire. She laughed, and poured herself a glass of wine, no water, like a man.

"I'll drink, then," she says. "And you will call it wine that gave me voice, the imaginings of wine that brought me to consider you, and I will trouble you no more."

She swallowed the wine, and a tear gleamed on her cheeks.

The other woman walked over to the door, and closed it, and dropped the bar. Morgan looked up at the noise.

"Use my name, Morgan," she said, softly, and she walked over, leaned down, and touched her hair.

Her eyes drifted shut, and she shivered, as she touched hair as soft as her own. "Gwynhwyfar,"Morgan whispered, and turned her face up to the other woman. She spoke with the accent of her old nurse, and Guinevere felt the heat of tears threatening. Her lips were very, very soft on Guinevere's skin. They were standing, gasping into each other's mouths, and she said, "Come," and Guinevere followed her obediently to the bed. She pulled off her outer tunic, pulled off her inner tunic, and was naked before her, and she was naked before her in return, and touched another woman for the first time.

She discoverered the thousand textures of her shoulders with her hands, the running tributaries of scars from carrying a child with her fingers, and kissed them, and found that she needed to map them with her tongue, until she found herself hesitating, and Morgan spoke, voice hoarse with want. "Let me show you, lovely one."

And it was softer than ermine, and like flame dancing on the skin, and sharp as want, and touching her Guinevere found that she mapped the borders of herself, and wept with the force of it. They fell asleep in each other's arms.

Guinevere woke to hear an argument whispered by the coals of the fire. Morgan, wearing only her sea-blue dress half-laced, her hair loose, and Arthur, silvered by moonlight. From the way he stood he'd taken wine before he came, wine enough that he would speak first, and think later.

"Arthur," she said, and there was a purr and a caress in her voice. "Cariad," she whispered, and Guinevere woke all the way up, for Morgan had named her husband beloved in the language of night.

"I hate you," he said, and there was heat in his voice that was not hatred.

"I know," she said, and kissed him. He jerked away from her, and licked his lips, eyes widening as he recognized the scent on her mouth.

"Can you leave nothing alone, you heathen bitch?" he said fiercely. "You spoil all that is mine!"

"And this from you? You of all men to accuse me? I think not, brother mine. She touched me first, Arthur, and have you not seen her eyes on me in the hall?"

There was a long pause of truth too painful to speak, and finally he spoke.

"I have not seen her eyes on you," he said, voice pained, "for in truth, I watch you myself, and the memory of you tears at me like the hounds of hell."

"Cariad," she whispered. "Brawd...Dw i'n edrych hefyd..."

He made a noise of pain, and then they were kissing in the moonlight, and it was the kiss of lovers parted, not that of siblings. Guinevere knew suddenly the secret she sensed in him in the night, and in his silences. Yet she could not be angry. One could as well be angry at the tide for coming in, and the sand for growing wet with the sea spray. And she knew, watching them in the moonlight, why the standing stones whispered of sex as well as blood in their silences.

And he suddenly pushed her from him, and shook his head, and she went out like a cat that has caught a fat pigeon.

Arthur stood there for a moment, and watched her go. He looked at the bed, and saw Guinevere seeming to sleep, and sat down in the chair by the fire, and sighed.

His voice was almost inaudible."Morgan, chwaer, mi fyddwch fy angau, cariad..." and broke on a sob.

Guinevere rolled over in bed so that he wouldn't see her crying, too.

*  
*  
*

Notes on the Welsh:

Cariad,Brawd...Dw i'n edrych hefyd...

Lover,Brother....I watch also...

Morgan, chwaer, mi fyddwch fy angau, cariad...

Morgan, Sister, you will be my death, my love...

 


End file.
